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Fabrication (game)
Fabrication is an in-development prequel to White Pearl, focusing on the subplot that was revealed across the game. The game initially entered development from August-October 2016, before it was cancelled so he could finish White Pearl. After White Pearl was finished, Harry didn't want to work on another indie game by himself, but encouragement from family and friends led him to doing so. Unlike White Pearl, the title will be commercial. Harry aims for the quality to be the same as White Pearl or higher. It is going to have a main story around 15-20 hours of length, with focus on additional content and new mechanics such as "reputation" and "relationship" which affect some outcomes in the story and content. The combat is planning to be expanded from White Pearl, with new mechanics such as "combos" and "team attacks". The game is also planned to have deeper side content, in the form of missions that players undertake from their base of operations, The Underground. The game was announced at July 2018. Pre-production and planning for the game carried out throughout all of 2018 before the game entered production in 2019, starting with the first alpha release available to certain testers at January 29th 2019. The game was announced early to generate interest in the title while the White Pearl fanbase was still active and interested. These trailers detail more about the game: https://youtu.be/uPE6cXCpq44 - Contains information relating to the game's basic concept at the time. https://youtu.be/6ZKAcMlDTU4 - Contains information relating to the game's development, and how the game will play. As Harry is creating the story, locations and assets first - none of the 'fun' part can be shown, like the crafting system, battle system and mission system (these are essentially sidequests in White Pearl, but more fleshed out). Design There are several differences when you compare Fabrication to White Pearl. Whilst the game was going through development, Development When plans were being made during June 2018, it was decided that Fabrication will be a commercial game. This, in turn, would lead to a longer development cycle with the need to obtain licences for graphics, scripts and sounds. Development cost of White Pearl was £165 but for Fabrication it is estimated to be £300 at most. The game began development several weeks after the Steam release of White Pearl, through January-May 2018 on RPGMaker MV. However, numerous issues with the engine caused the whole project to be restarted on RPGMaker VXAce entirely by June 2018. The main reason for this is because Harry doesn't want to have to learn an engine that he'll "barely use" in the future, and instead choose to fall back on experience, leading to an, overall, more effective and quicker development cycle. June-August 2018 was dedicated entirely to pre-production, and planning the location and characters. The story plan was completed on 28th September 2018, which Harry has been using to follow through the game's story and main content to completion. It is from this plan that he has created everything that transpires in the game, as well as a brief overview of the locations. Harry also regularly updated his development blog, announcing several new things, such as the promise of "a less buggy launch". Harry wants to focus on making Fabrication better based on the feedback from White Pearl - making it more interesting to play overall with a story that is easier to make sense of. Because of this, the estimated development time is going to be very long because of other obligations. Harry says that the game is being developed "like a hobby" - contrary to the ethic for White Pearl, which was: "to work on it full time as much as possible". When the game began development in 2019, it went through a tough development. From a lack of personal motivation, with the need to focus on other priorities, Harry said that development of Fabrication will be 'very erractic'. The game was initially scheduled to release in 2019, but Harry underestimated the amount of work and time he needed. The game was only 20% main content complete in December 2018. In April 2019, it was 33% main content complete. In October, it was 50% main content complete. By 'main content', this means the games story, locations, characters and assets - what Harry believes to be the foundation of the game. After it is done, he intends to build on that foundation and make it fun and impressive to him. Most of the gameplay elements were decided and implemented throughout the game in October 2018-May 2019. Harry's main focus on Fabrication is to make it fun to play, emphasis on gameplay, with new and interesting systems that "push his boundaries". Because it was going to be the last independently developed title he will make, as well as the final RPGMaker game he'll direct, and the last foreseeable entry in the Chronicles of Ottrea franchise, Harry wanted to "really take his time" with the project, take on challenges, and impress even himself. He also stated that he's not suited for indie development, since RPGMaker is a "hobby engine", and he feels that creating games is not as enjoyable when you don't have a team to share ideas with. Harry cited the development of Fabrication as "needlessly stressful" because of these new challenges like creating a sneaking system, combo system, that he decided to make. "If I decided to work on the game one day, I won't be able to put it down until I've finished what I want to finish. I suppose that is a good work ethic... but I was hungry and not in the best state of mind while making Fabrication -laughs-. Well, most of the time, anyway. I just worked on this game whenever I felt like it. So I feel that the results are very different this time. I was impressed with how fast I managed to work on stuff. But also sad that, a lot of times, I knew the game was highly unfinished and I still had a lot to go through -laughs-." (written on September 2019, developer comments). Development of this game was split up into two sections: "main content" and "additional content". As of October 3rd, Harry announced on his Twitter that Fabrication was "half-way done" and that he intends to take a break from the project for the rest of the year to focus on study and other obligations. Seemingly not taking a break - in November 2019, it was announced that the game would be fully compatible with Steam: full achievement and Steam Cloud support and the "second private alpha release build" will be released in December 2019 to QA testers. The build was then delayed until January 23rd 2020 in order to focus on study. It was then cancelled in order for Harry to focus on developing the game internally. When the game is close to completion, he intends to do public testing. Compared to the first build released at 29th January 2019, it has: - A total of 4 more chapters (Chapters 1-5) - More plot - Crafting system: "Synthesis and Desynthesis" - Some side content - Lots more gameplay - Debug support for player testing Development of Fabrication compared to White Pearl was unique in a way since the game build was fully present on Steam long before it's release: all Harry had to do was send out the CD keys to the QA testers and they could play it on Steam. His favourites games he played while developing the game were "Kingdom Hearts 3" and "Death Stranding".